KM 


American 
Individualism 

By  Herbert  Hoover 


A  Timely  Message  to 

the  American  People 


*'  Progress  will  march  if  we  hold  an 
abiding  faith  in  the  intelligence , 
the  initiative,  the  character^  the 
courage,  and  the  divine  touch  in 
the  individual.  IVe  can  safeguard 
these  ends  if  we  give  to  each  indi- 
vidual that  opportunity  for  which 
the  spirit  of  America  stands.  JVe 
can  make  a  social  system  as  perfect 
as  our  generation  merits  and  one 
that  will  be  received  in  gratitude 
by  our  children."  _^ 

[From  a  keynote  paragraph.) 


University  of  California  •  Berkeley 

Bequest  of 
Marian  Allen  Williams 


AMERICAN 
INDIVIDUALISM 


AMERICAN 
INDIVIDUALISM 

BY 
HERBERT  HOOVER 


GARDEN  CITY  NEW  YORK 

DOUBLEDAY.  PAGE  &  COMPANY 
1922 


COPYRIGHT,  1922,    BY 

DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  COMPANY 

ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED,    INCLUDING   THAT   OF    TRANSLATION 

INTO  FOREIGN  LANGUAGES,  INCLUDING  THE  SCANDINAVIAN 

PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

AT 

THE  COUNTRY  LIFE  PRESS,  GARDEN  CITY,  N.  Y. 

First  Edition 


CONTENTS 


PA6V 


American  Individualism  ....  1 

Philosophic  Grounds      ....  14 

Spiritual  Phases 26 

Economic  Phases 32 

Political  Phases 48 

The  Future 63 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/americanindividuOOhoovrich 


AMERICAN 
INDIVIDUALISM 


AMERICAN   INDIVIDUALISM. 

WE  HAVE  witnessed  in  this  last 
eight  years  the  spread  of  revolu- 
tion over  one-third  of  the  world.  The 
causes  of  these  explosions  lie  at  far 
greater  depths  than  the  failure  of  gov- 
ernments in  war.  The  war  itself  in  its 
last  stages  was  a  conflict  of  social 
philosophies — but  beyond  this  the 
causes  of  social  explosion  lay  in  the 
great  inequalities  and  injustices  of  cen- 
turies flogged  beyond  endurance  by  the 
conflict  and  freed  from  restraint  by  the 
destruction  of  war.  The  urgent  forces 
which  drive  human  society  have  been 
plunged  into  a  terrible  furnace.  Great 
theories  spun  by  dreamers  to  remedy 
the  pressing  human  ills  have  come  to 
the  front  of  men's  minds.     Great  for- 


2     AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

mulas  came  into  life  that  promised  to 
dissolve  all  trouble.  Great  masses  of 
people  have  flocked  to  their  banners  in 
hopes  born  of  misery  and  suffering. 
Nor  has  this  great  social  ferment  been 
confined  to  those  nations  that  have 
burned  with  revolutions. 

Now,  as  the  storm  of  war,  of  revolu- 
tion and  of  emotion  subsides  there  is 
left  even  with  us  of  the  United  States 
much  unrest,  much  discontent  with  the 
surer  forces  of  human  advancement. 
To  all  of  us,  out  of  this  crucible  of 
actual,  poignant,  individual  experience 
has  come  a  deal  of  new  understanding, 
and  it  is  for  all  of  us  to  ponder  these 
new  currents  if  we  are  to  shape  our 
future  with  intelligence. 

Even  those  parts  of  the  world  that 
suffered  less  from  the  war  have  been 
partly  infected  by  these  ideas.  Beyond 
this,  however,  many  have  had  high 
hopes  of  civilization  suddenly  purified 


AMERICAN  INDIVroUALISM     3 

and  ennobled  by  the  sacrifices  and 
services  of  the  war;  they  had  thought 
t'le  fine  unity  of  purpose  gained  in  war 
would  be  carried  into  great  unity  of 
action  in  remedy  of  the  faults  of  civili- 
zation in  peace.  But  from  concentra- 
tion of  every  spiritual  and  material 
energy  upon  the  single  purpose  of  war 
the  scene  changed  to  the  immense  com- 
plexity and  the  many  purposes  of  peace. 

Thus  there  loom  up  certain  definite 
underlying  forces  in  our  national  life 
that  need  to  be  stripped  of  the  imagi- 
nary— the  transitory — and  a  definition 
should  be  given  to  the  actual  permanent 
and  persistent  motivation  of  our  civiliza- 
tion. In  contemplation  of  these  ques- 
tions we  must  go  far  deeper  than  the 
superficials  of  our  political  and  eco- 
nomic structure,  for  these  are  but  the 
products  of  our  social  philosophy — the 
machinery  of  our  social  system. 


4     AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

Nor  is  it  ever  amiss  to  review  the 
political,  economic,  and  spiritual  princi- 
ples through  which  our  country  has 
steadily  grown  in  usefulness  and  great- 
ness, not  only  to  preserve  them  from 
being  fouled  by  false  notions,  but  more 
importantly  that  we  may  guide  our- 
selves in  the  road  of  progress. 

Five  or  six  great  social  philosophies 
are  at  struggle  in  the  world  for  as- 
cendency. There  is  the  Individualism 
of  America.  There  is  the  Individual- 
ism of  the  more  democratic  states  of 
Europe  with  its  careful  reservations  of 
castes  and  classes.  There  are  Com- 
munism, Socialism,  Syndicalism,  Cap- 
italism, and  finally  there  is  Autocracy 
— whether  by  birth,  by  possessions, 
militarism,  or  divine  right  of  kings. 
Even  the  Divine  Right  still  lingers  on 
although  our  lifetime  has  seen  fully 
two-thirds  of  the  earth's  population,  in- 


AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM     5 

eluding  Germany,  Austria,  Russia,  and 
China,  arrive  at  a  state  of  angry  dis- 
gust with  this  type  of  social  motive 
power  and  throw  it  on  the  scrap  heap. 

All  these  thoughts  are  in  ferment  to- 
day in  every  country  in  the  world.  They 
fluctuate  in  ascendency  with  times  and 
places.  They  compromise  with  each 
other  in  daily  reaction  on  governments 
and  peoples.  Some  of  these  ideas  are 
perhaps  more  adapted  to  one  race  than 
another.  Some  are  false,  some  are 
true.  What  we  are  interested  in  is 
their  challenge  to  the  physical  and 
spiritual  forces  of  America. 

The  partisans  of  some  of  these  other 
brands  of  social  schemes  challenge  us  to 
comparison;  and  some  of  their  parti- 
sans even  among  our  own  people  are 
increasing  in  their  agitation  that  we 
adopt  one  or  another  or  parts  of  their 
devices  in  place  of  our  tried  individual- 
ism.   They  insist  that  our  social  foun- 


6     AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

dations  are  exhausted,  that  like  feudal- 
ism and  autocracy  America's  plan  has 
served  its  purpose — that  it  must  be 
abandoned. 

There  are  those  who  have  been  left  in 
sober  doubt  of  our  institutions  or  are 
confounded  by  bewildering  catchwords 
of  vivid  phrases.  For  in  this  welter  of 
discussions  there  is  much  attempt  to 
glorify  or  defame  social  and  economic 
forces  with  phrases.  Nor  indeed  should 
we  disregard  the  potency  of  some  of 
these  phrases  in  their  stir  to  action. — 
''The  dictatorship  of  the  Proletariat/' 
'' Capitalistic  nations,"  "Germany  over 
all/'  and  a  score  of  others.  We  need 
only  to  review  those  that  have  jumped 
to  horseback  during  the  last  ten  years 
in  order  that  we  may  be  properly  awed 
by  the  great  social  and  political  havoc 
that  can  be  worked  where  the  bestial 
instincts  of  hate,  murder,  and  destruc- 


AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM     7 

tion  are  clothed  by  the  demagogue  in 
the  fine  terms  of  poUtieal  idealism. 

For  myself,  let  me  say  at  the  very 
outset  that  my  faith  in  the  essential 
truth,  strength,  and  vitality  of  the 
developing  creed  by  which  we  have 
hitherto  lived  in  this  country  of  ours 
has  been  confirmed  and  deepened  by 
the  searching  experiences  of  seven 
years  of  service  in  the  backwash  and 
misery  of  war.  Seven  years  of  con- 
tending with  economic  degeneration, 
with  social  disintegration,  with  in- 
cessant political  dislocation,  with  all  of 
its  seething  and  ferment  of  individual 
and  class  conflict,  could  but  impress 
me  with  the  primary  motivation  of 
social  forces,  and  the  necessity  for 
broader  thought  upon  their  great  issues 
to  humanity.  And  from  it  all  I  emerge 
an  individualist — an  unashamed  in- 
dividualist.    But  let  me  say  also  that 


8     AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

I  am  an  American  individualist.  For 
America  has  been  steadily  developing 
the  ideals  that  constitute  progressive 
individualism. 

No  doubt,  individualism  run  riot, 
with  no  tempering  principle,  would  pro- 
vide a  long  category  of  inequalities,  of 
tyrannies,  dominations,  and  injustices. 
America,  however,  has  tempered  the 
whole  conception  of  individualism  by 
the  injection  of  a  definite  principle,  and 
from  this  principle  it  follows  that  at- 
tempts at  domination,  whether  in  gov- 
ernment or  in  the  processes  of  industry 
and  commerce,  are  under  an  insistent 
curb.  If  we  would  have  the  values  of 
individualism,  their  stimulation  to  ini- 
tiative, to  the  development  of  hand  and 
intellect,  to  the  high  development  of 
thought  and  spirituality,  they  must  be 
tempered  with  that  firm  and  fixed  ideal 
of  American  individualism — an  equal- 


AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM     9 

ity  of  opportunity.  If  we  would  have 
these  values  we  must  soften  its  hard- 
ness and  stimulate  progress  through 
that  sense  of  service  that  lies  in  our 
people. 

Therefore,  it  is  not  the  individualism 
of  other  countries  for  which  I  would 
speak,  but  the  individualism  of  Amer- 
ica. Our  individualism  differs  from 
all  others  because  it  embraces  these 
great  ideals:  that  while  we  build  our 
society  upon  the  attainment  of  the  indi- 
vidual^ we  shall  safeguard  to  every  indi- 
vidual an  equality  of  opportunity  to  take 
that  position  in  the  community  to  which 
his  intelligence^  character^  ability^  and 
ambition  entitle  him;  that  we  keep  the 
social  solution  free  from  frozen  strata  of 
classes;  that  we  shall  stimulate  effort  of 
each  individual  to  achievement;  that 
through  an  enlarging  sense  of  respon- 
sibility and  understanding  we  shall  assist 
him  to  this  attainment;  while  he  in  turn 


10  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

must  stand  up  to  the  emery  wheel  of  com- 
petition. 

Individualism  cannot  be  maintained 
as  the  foundation  of  a  society  if  it  looks 
to  only  legalistic  justice  based  upon 
contracts,  property,  and  political  equal- 
ity. Such  legalistic  safeguards  are 
themselves  not  enough.  In  our  in- 
dividualism we  have  long  since  aban- 
doned the  laissez  faire  of  the  18th 
Century — the  notion  that  it  is  "every 
man  for  himself  and  the  devil  take  the 
hindmost/'  We  abandoned  that  when 
we  adopted  the  ideal  of  equality  of 
opportunity — the  fair  chance  of  Abra- 
ham Lincoln.  We  have  confirmed  its 
abandonment  in  terms  of  legislation,  of 
social  and  economic  justice, — in  part 
because  we  have  learned  that  it  is  the 
hindmost  who  throws  the  bricks  at  our 
social  edifice,  in  part  because  we  have 
learned  that  the  foremost  are  not  al- 


AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM   11 

ways  the  best  nor  the  hindmost  the 
worst — and  in  part  because  we  have 
learned  that  social  injustice  is  the 
destruction  of  justice  itself.  We  have 
learned  that  the  impulse  to  production 
can  only  be  maintained  at  a  high  pitch 
if  there  is  a  fair  division  of  the  product. 
We  have  also  learned  that  fair  division 
can  only  be  obtained  by  certain  restric- 
tions on  the  strong  and  the  dominant. 
We  have  indeed  gone  even  further  in 
the  20th  Century  with  the  embrace- 
ment  of  the  necessity  of  a  greater  and 
broader  sense  of  service  and  responsibil- 
ity to  others  as  a  part  of  individualism. 

Whatever  may  be  the  case  with  regard 
to  Old  World  individualism  (and  we 
have  given  more  back  to  Europe  than 
we  received  from  her)  the  truth  that  is 
important  for  us  to  grasp  today  is 
that  there  is  a  world  of  difference  be- 
tween the  principles  and  spirit  of  Old 


12  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

World  individualism  and  that  which  we 
have  developed  in  our  own  country. 

We  have,  in  fact,  a  special  social  sys- 
tem of  our  own.  We  have  made  it 
ourselves  from  materials  brought  in 
revolt  from  conditions  in  Europe.  We 
have  lived  it;  we  constantly  improve 
it;  we  have  seldom  tried  to  define  it. 
It  abhors  autocracy  and  does  not  argue 
with  it,  but  fights  it.  It  is  not  capital- 
ism, or  socialism,  or  syndicalism,  nor  a 
cross  breed  of  them.  Like  most  Amer- 
icans, I  refuse  to  be  damned  by  any- 
body's word-classification  of  it,  such  as 
"capitalism,"  ''plutocracy,"  "proletar- 
iat" or  "middle  class,"  or  any  other,  or 
to  any  kind  of  compartment  that  is 
based  on  the  assumption  of  some  group 
dominating  somebody  else. 

The  social  force  in  which  I  am  inter- 
ested is  far  higher  and  far  more  pre- 
cious a  thing  than  all  these.  It  springs 
from    something    infinitely    more    en- 


AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM   13 

during;  it  springs  from  the  one  source 
of  human  progress — that  each  individ- 
ual shall  be  given  the  chance  and  stimu- 
lation for  development  of  the  best  with 
which  he  has  been  endowed  in  heart  and 
mind;  it  is  the  sole  source  of  progress; 
it  is  American  individualism. 

The  rightfulness  of  our  individualism 
can  rest  either  on  philosophic,  political, 
economic,  or  spiritual  grounds.  It  can 
rest  on  the  ground  of  being  the  only 
safe  avenue  to  further  human  progress. 


PHILOSOPHIC   GROUNDS. 

ON  THE  philosophic  side  we  can 
agree  at  once  that  inteUigence, 
character,  courage,  and  the  divine  spark 
of  the  human  soul  are  alone  the  prop- 
erty of  individuals.  These  do  not  lie 
in  agreements,  in  organizations,  in  in- 
stitutions, in  masses,  or  in  groups. 
They  abide  alone  in  the  individual  mind 
and  heart. 

Production  both  of  mind  and  hand 
rests  upon  impulses  in  each  individual. 
These  impulses  are  made  of  the  varied 
forces  of  original  instincts,  motives,  and 
acquired  desires.  JMany  of  these  are 
destructive  and  must  be  restrained 
through  moral  leadership  and  authority 
of  the  law  and  be  eliminated  finally  by 
education.    All  are  modified  by  a  vast 

14 


PHILOSOPHIC  GROUNDS       15 

fund  of  experience  and  a  vast  plant  and 
equipment  of  civilization  which  we  pass 
on  with  increments  to  each  succeeding 
generation. 

The  inherited  instincts  of  self-preser- 
vation, acquisitiveness,  fear,  kindness, 
hate,  curiosity,  desire  for  self-expression, 
for  power,  for  adulation,  that  we  carry 
over  from  a  thousand  of  generations 
must,  for  good  or  evil,  be  comprehended 
in  a  workable  system  embracing  our 
accumulation  of  experiences  and  equip- 
ment. They  may  modify  themselves 
with  time — but  in  terms  of  generations. 
They  differ  in  their  urge  upon  different 
individuals.  The  dominant  ones  are 
selfish.  But  no  civilization  could  be 
built  or  can  endure  solely  upon  the 
groundwork  of  unrestrained  and  unin- 
telligent self-interest.  The  problem  of 
the  world  is  to  restrain  the  destructive 
instincts  while  strengthening  and  en- 
larging those  of  altruistic  character  and 


16  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

constructive  impulse — ^f or  thus  we  build 
for  the  future. 

From  the  instincts  of  kindness,  pity, 
fealty  to  family  and  race;  the  love  of 
liberty;  the  mystical  yearnings  for  spir- 
itual things;  the  desire  for  fuller  ex- 
pression of  the  creative  faculties;  the 
impulses  of  service  to  community  and 
nation,  are  moulded  the  ideals  of  our 
people.  And  the  most  potent  force  in 
society  is  its  ideals.  If  one  were  to 
attempt  to  delimit  the  potency  of  in- 
stinct and  ideals,  it  would  be  found  that 
while  instinct  dominates  in  our  preser- 
vation yet  the  great  propelling  force  of 
progress  is  right  ideals.  It  is  true  we 
do  not  realize  the  ideal;  not  even  a 
single  person  personifies  that  realiza- 
tion. It  is  therefore  not  surprising  that 
society,  a  collection  of  persons,  a  neces- 
sary maze  of  compromises,  cannot 
realize  it.     But  that  it  has  ideals,  that 


PHILOSOPHIC  GROUNDS       17 

they  revolve  in  a  system  that  makes  for 
steady  advance  of  them  is  the  first 
thing.  Yet  true  as  this  is,  the  day  has 
not  arrived  when  any  economic  or  so- 
cial system  will  function  and  last  if 
founded  upon  altruism  alone. 

With  the  growth  of  ideals  through 
education,  with  the  higher  realization 
of  freedom,  of  justice,  of  humanity,  of 
service,  the  selfish  impulses  become  less 
and  less  dominant,  and  if  we  ever  reach 
the  millennium,  they  will  disappear  in 
the  aspirations  and  satisfactions  of  pure 
altruism.  But  for  the  next  several 
generations  we  dare  not  abandon  self- 
interest  as  a  motive  force  to  leadership 
and  to  production,  lest  we  die. 

The  will-o'-the-wisp  of  all  breeds  of 
socialism  is  that  they  contemplate  a 
motivation  of  human  animals  by  al- 
truism alone.  It  necessitates  a  bu- 
reaucracy of  the  entire  population,  in 
which,    having    obliterated    the    eco- 


18  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

nomic  stimulation  of  each  member,  the 
fine  gradations  of  character  and  abiUty 
are  to  be  arranged  in  relative  authority 
by  ballot  or  more  likely  by  a  Tammany 
HaU  or  a  Bolshevist  party,  or  some 
other  form  of  tyranny.  The  proof  of 
the  futility  of  these  ideas  as  a  stimula- 
tion to  the  development  and  activity  of 
the  individual  does  not  lie  alone  in  the 
ghastly  failure  of  Russia,  but  it  also 
lies  in  our  own  failure  in  attempts  at 
nationalized  industry. 

Likewise  the  basic  foundations  of 
autocracy,  whether  it  be  class  govern- 
ment or  capitalism  in  the  sense  that  a 
few  men  through  unrestrained  control 
of  property  determine  the  welfare  of 
great  numbers,  is  as  far  apart  from  the 
rightful  expression  of  American  in- 
dividualism as  the  two  poles.  The  will- 
o'-the-wisp  of  autocracy  in  any  form  is 
that  it  supposes  that  the  good  Lord  en- 
dowed a  special  few  with  all  the  divine 


PHILOSOPHIC  GROUNDS       19 

attributes.  It  contemplates  one  hu- 
man animal  dealing  to  the  other  human 
animals  his  just  share  of  earth,  of  glory, 
and  of  immortality.  The  proof  of  the 
futility  of  these  ideas  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  world  does  not  lie  alone  in 
the  grim  failure  of  Germany,  but  it  lies 
in  the  damage  to  our  moral  and  social 
fabric  from  those  who  have  sought  eco- 
nomic domination  in  America,  whether 
employer  or  employee. 

We  in  America  have  had  too  much 
experience  of  life  to  fool  ourselves  into 
pretending  that  all  men  are  equal  in 
ability,  in  character,  in  intelligence,  in 
ambition.  That  was  part  of  the  clap- 
trap of  the  French  Revolution.  We 
have  grown  to  understand  that  all  we 
can  hope  to  assure  to  the  individual 
through  government  is  liberty,  justice, 
intellectual  welfare,  equality  of  oppor- 
tunity, and  stimulation  to  service. 


20  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

It  is  in  maintenance  of  a  society  fluid 
to  these  human  quahties  that  our  in- 
dividuaUsm  departs  from  the  individ- 
uaKsm  of  Europe.  There  can  be  no 
rise  for  the  individual  through  the 
frozen  strata  of  classes,  or  of  castes,  and 
no  stratification  can  take  place  in  a 
mass  livened  by  the  free  stir  of  its  parti- 
cles. This  guarding  of  our  individual- 
ism against  stratification  insists  not 
only  in  preserving  in  the  social  solution 
an  equal  opportunity  for  the  able  and 
ambitious  to  rise  from  the  bottom;  it 
also  insists  that  the  sons  of  the  success- 
ful shall  not  by  any  mere  right  of  birth 
or  favor  continue  to  occupy  their  fath- 
ers' places  of  power  against  the  rise  of 
a  new  generation  in  process  of  coming 
up  from  the  bottom.  The  pioneers  of 
our  American  individualism  had  the 
good  sense  not  to  reward  Washington 
and  Jefferson  and  Hamilton  with  heredi- 
tary dukedoms  and  fixtures  in  landed 


PHILOSOPHIC  GROUNDS       21 

estates,  as  Great  Britain  rewarded 
Marlborough  and  Nelson.  Otherwise 
our  American  fields  of  opportunity 
would  have  been  clogged  with  long 
generations  inheriting  their  fathers' 
privileges  without  their  fathers'  capac- 
ity for  service. 

That  our  system  has  avoided  the  es- 
tablishment and  domination  of  class 
has  a  significant  proof  in  the  present 
Administration  in  Washington.  Of  the 
twelve  men  comprising  the  President, 
Vice-President,  and  Cabinet,  nine  have 
earned  their  own  way  in  life  without 
economic  inheritance,  and  eight  of 
them  started  with  manual  labor. 

If  we  examine  the  impulses  that  carry 
us  forward,  none  is  so  potent  for  prog- 
ress as  the  yearning  for  individual  self- 
expression,  the  desire  for  creation  of 
something.  Perhaps  the  greatest  hu- 
man   happiness    flows    from    personal 


22  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

achievement.  Here  lies  the  great 
urge  of  the  constructive  instinct  of 
mankind.  But  it  can  only  thrive  in  a 
society  where  the  individual  has  liberty 
and  stimulation  to  achievement.  Nor 
does  the  community  progress  except 
through  its  participation  in  these  mul- 
titudes of  achievements. 

Furthermore,  the  maintenance  of 
productivity  and  the  advancement  of 
the  things  of  the  spirit  depend  upon  the 
ever-renewed  supply  from  the  mass  of 
those  who  can  rise  to  leadership.  Our 
social,  economic,  and  intellectual  prog- 
ress is  almost  solely  dependent  upon 
the  creative  minds  of  those  individuals 
with  imaginative  and  administrative 
intelligence  who  create  or  who  carry 
discoveries  to  widespread  application. 
No  race  possesses  more  than  a  small  per- 
centage of  these  minds  in  a  single  gen- 
eration.    But  little  thought  has  ever 


PHILOSOPHIC  GROUNDS       23 

been  given  to  our  racial  dependency 
upon  them.  Nor  that  our  progress 
is  in  so  large  a  measure  due  to  the  fact 
that  with  our  increased  means  of  com- 
munication these  rare  individuals  are 
today  able  to  spread  their  influence 
over  so  enlarged  a  number  of  lesser 
capable  minds  as  to  have  increased 
their  potency  a  million-fold.  In  truth, 
the  vastly  greater  productivity  of  the 
world  with  actually  less  physical  labor 
is  due  to  the  wider  spread  of  their  in- 
fluence through  the  discovery  of  these 
facilities.  And  they  can  arise  solely 
through  the  selection  that  comes  from 
the  free-running  mills  of  competition. 
They  must  be  free  to  rise  from  the 
mass;  they  must  be  given  the  attraction 
of  premiums  to  effort. 

Leadership  is  a  quality  of  the  in- 
dividual. It  is  the  individual  alone 
who  can  function  in  the  world  of  in- 
tellect and  in  the  field  of  leadership. 


24  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

If  democracy  is  to  secure  its  authorities 
in  morals,  religion,  and  statesmanship, 
it  must  stimulate  leadership  from  its 
own  mass.  Human  leadership  cannot 
be  replenished  by  selection  like  queen 
bees,  by  divine  right  or  bureaucracies, 
but  by  the  free  rise  of  ability,  character, 
and  intelligence. 

Even  so,  leadership  cannot,  no  mat- 
ter how  brilliant,  carry  progress  far 
ahead  of  the  average  of  the  mass  of 
individual  units.  Progress  of  the  na- 
tion is  the  sum  of  progress  in  its  in- 
dividuals. Acts  and  ideas  that  lead  to 
progress  are  born  out  of  the  womb  of 
the  individual  mind,  not  out  of  the 
mind  of  the  crowd.  The  crowd  only 
feels:  it  has  no  mind  of  its  own  which 
can  plan.  The  crowd  is  credulous,  it 
destroys,  it  consumes,  it  hates,  and  it 
dreams— but  it  never  builds.  It  is  one 
of  the  most  profound  and  important  of 
exact  psychological  truths  that  man  in 


PHILOSOPHIC  GROUNDS       25 

the  mass  does  not  think  but  only  feels. 
The  mob  functions  only  in  a  world  of 
emotion.  The  demagogue  feeds  on 
mob  emotions  and  his  leadership  is  the 
leadership  of  emotion,  not  the  leader- 
ship of  intellect  and  progress.  Popular 
desires  are  no  criteria  to  the  real  need; 
they  can  be  determined  only  by  delib- 
erative consideration,  by  education,  by 
constructive  leadership. 


SPIRITUAL   PHASES. 

OUR  social  and  economic  system 
cannot  march  toward  better  days 
unless  it  is  inspired  by  things  of  the 
spirit.  It  is  here  that  the  higher  pur- 
poses of  individualism  must  find  their 
sustenance.  Men  do  not  live  by  bread 
alone.  Nor  is  individualism  merely  a 
stimulus  to  production  and  the  road  to 
liberty;  it  alone  admits  the  universal 
divine  inspiration  of  every  human  soul. 
I  may  repeat  that  the  divine  spark 
does  not  lie  in  agreements,  in  organiza- 
tions, in  institutions,  in  masses  or  in 
groups.  Spirituality  with  its  faith,  its 
hope,  its  charity,  can  be  increased  by 
each  individual's  own  effort.  And  in 
proportion  as  each  individual  increases 
his  own  store  of  spirituality,  in  that  pro- 
se 


SPIRITUAL  PHASES  27 

portion  increases  the  idealism  of  democ- 
racy. 

For  centuries,  the  human  race  be- 
heved  that  divine  inspiration  rested  in 
a  few.  The  result  was  blind  faith  in 
religious  hierarchies,  the  Divine  Right 
of  Kings.  The  world  has  been  disillu- 
sioned of  this  belief  that  divinity  rests 
in  any  special  group  or  class  whether  it 
be  through  a  creed,  a  tyranny  of  kings 
or  of  proletariat.  Our  individualism 
insists  upon  the  divine  in  each  human 
being.  It  rests  upon  the  firm  faith  that 
the  divine  spark  can  be  awakened  in 
every  heart.  It  was  the  refusal  to  com- 
promise these  things  that  led  to  the 
migration  of  those  religious  groups  who 
so  largely  composed  our  forefathers. 
Our  diversified  religious  faiths  are  the 
apotheosis  of  spiritual  individualism. 

The  vast  multiplication  of  voluntary 
organizations  for  altruistic  purposes  are 


28  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

themselves  proof  of  the  ferment  of 
spirituaUty,  service,  and  mutual  re- 
sponsibility. These  associations  for 
advancement  of  public  welfare,  im- 
provement, morals,  charity,  public  opin- 
ion, health,  the  clubs  and  societies  for 
recreation  and  intellectual  advance- 
ment, represent  something  moving  at 
a  far  greater  depth  than  "joining." 
They  represent  the  widespread  aspira- 
tion for  mutual  advancement,  self- 
expression,  and  neighborly  helpfulness. 
Moreover,  today  when  we  rehearse  our 
own  individual  memories  of  success,  we 
find  that  none  gives  us  such  comfort  as 
memory  of  service  given.  Do  we  not 
refer  to  our  veterans  as  service  men? 
Do  not  our  merchants  and  business 
men  pride  themselves  in  something 
of  service  given  beyond  the  price  of 
their  goods  .^  When  we  traverse  the 
glorious  deeds  of  our  fathers,  we  today 
never  enumerate  those  acts  that  were 


SPIRITUAL  PHASES  29 

not  rooted  in  the  soil  of  service.  Those 
whom  we  revere  are  those  who  tri- 
umphed in  service,  for  from  them  comes 
the  upKft  of  the  human  heart  and  the 
uphft  of  the  human  mind. 

While  there  are  forces  in  the  growth 
of  our  individualism  which  must  be 
curbed  with  vigilance,  yet  there  are  no 
less  glorious  spiritual  forces  growing 
within  that  promise  for  the  future. 
There  is  developing  in  our  people  a  new 
valuation  of  individuals  and  of  groups 
and  of  nations.  It  is  a  rising  vision  of 
service.  Indeed  if  I  were  to  select  the 
social  force  that  above  all  others  has 
advanced  sharply  during  these  past 
years  of  suffering,  it  is  that  of  service — 
service  to  those  with  whom  we  come  in 
contact,  service  to  the  nation,  and  ser- 
vice to  the  world  itself.  If  we  examine 
the  great  mystical  forces  of  the  past 
seven  years  we  find  this  great  spiritual 
force  poured  out  by  our  people  as  never 


30  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

before  in  the  history  of  the  world — ^the 
ideal  of  service. 

Just  now  we  are  weakened  by  the 
feeling  of  failure  of  immediate  realiza- 
tion of  the  great  ideas  and  hopes  that 
arose  through  the  exaltation  of  war. 
War  by  its  very  nature  sets  loose  cha- 
otic forces  of  which  the  resultants  cannot 
be  foretold  or  anticipated.  The  in- 
sensitiveness  to  the  brutalities  of  physi- 
cal violence,  and  all  the  spiritual  dis- 
locations of  war,  have  left  us,  at  the 
moment,  poorer.  The  amount  of  se- 
renity and  content  in  the  world  is 
smaller. 

The  spiritual  reaction  after  the  war 
has  been  in  part  the  fruit  of  some 
illusions  during  those  five  years.  In 
the  presence  of  unity  of  purpose  and 
the  mystic  emotions  of  war,  many  men 
came  to  believe  that  salvation  lay  in 
mass  and  group  action.  They  have 
seen  the  spiritual  and  material  mobil- 


SPIRITUAL  PHASES  31 

ization  of  nations,  of  classes,  and  groups, 
for  sacrifice  and  service;  they  have 
conceived  that  real  human  progress  can 
be  achieved  by  working  on  *Hhe  psy- 
chology of  the  people" — by  the  "mass 
mind";  they  yielded  to  leadership  with- 
out reservation;  they  conceived  that 
this  leadership  could  continue  without 
tyranny;  they  have  forgotten  that  per- 
manent spiritual  progress  lies  with  the 
individual. 


ECONOMIC  PHASES. 

THAT  high  and  increasing  stand- 
ards of  living  and  comfort  should 
be  the  first  of  considerations  in  public 
mind  and  in  government  needs  no 
apology.  We  have  long  since  realized 
that  the  basis  of  an  advancing  civiliza- 
tion must  be  a  high  and  growing 
standard  of  living  for  all  the  people, 
not  for  a  single  class;  that  education, 
food,  clothing,  housing,  and  the  spread- 
ing use  of  what  we  so  often  term  non- 
essentials, are  the  real  fertilizers  of  the 
soil  from  which  spring  the  finer  flowers 
of  life.  The  economic  development  of 
the  past  fifty  years  has  lifted  the  gen- 
eral standard  of  comfort  far  beyond  the 
dreams  of  our  forefathers.     The  only 

32 


ECONOMIC  PHASES  33 

road  to  further  advance  in  the  standard 
of  Uving  is  by  greater  invention,  greater 
ehmination  of  waste,  greater  produc- 
tion and  better  distribution  of  com- 
modities and  services,  for  by  increasing 
their  ratio  to  our  numbers  and  dividing 
them  justly  we  each  will  have  more  of 
them. 

The  superlative  value  of  individual- 
ism through  its  impulse  to  production, 
its  stimulation  to  invention,  has,  so 
far  as  I  know,  never  been  denied. 
Criticism  of  it  has  lain  in  its  wastes  but 
more  importantly  in  its  failures  of  equit- 
able sharing  of  the  product.  In  our 
country  these  contentions  are  mainly 
over  the  division  to  each  of  his  share  of 
the  comforts  and  luxuries,  for  none  of 
us  is  either  hungry  or  cold  or  without 
a  place  to  lay  his  head- — and  we  have 
much  besides.  In  less  than  four  dec- 
ades  we  have   added   electric   lights. 


34  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

plumbing,  telephones,  gramophones,  au- 
tomobiles, and  what  not  in  wide  diffu- 
sion to  our  standards  of  living.  Each 
in  turn  began  as  a  luxury,  each  in  turn 
has  become  so  commonplace  that  sev- 
enty or  eighty  per  cent,  of  our  people 
participate  in  them. 

To  all  practical  souls  there  is  little 
use  in  quarreling  over  the  share  of  each 
of  us  until  we  have  something  to  divide. 
So  long  as  we  maintain  our  individual- 
ism we  will  have  increasing  quantities 
to  share  and  we  shall  have  time  and 
leisure  and  taxes  with  which  to  fight 
out  proper  sharing  of  the  "surplus." 
The  income  tax  returns  show  that 
this  surplus  is  a  minor  part  of  our 
total  production  after  taxes  are  paid. 
Some  of  this  "surplus"  must  be  set 
aside  for  rewards  to  saving  for  stimula- 
tion of  proper  effort  to  skill,  to  leader- 
ship and  invention — therefore  the  dis- 
pute is  in  reality  over  much  less  than 


ECONOMIC  PHASES  35 

the  total  of  such  "surplus."  While  there 
should  be  no  minimizing  of  a  certain 
fringe  of  injustices  in  sharing  the  results 
of  production  or  in  the  wasteful  use  made 
by  some  of  their  share,  yet  there  is  vastly 
wider  field  for  gains  to  all  of  us  through 
cheapening  the  costs  of  production  and 
distribution  through  the  eliminating 
of  their  wastes,  from  increasing  the 
volume  of  product  by  each  and  every 
one  doing  his  utmost,  than  will  ever 
come  to  us  even  if  we  can  think  out  a 
method  of  abstract  justice  in  sharing 
which  did  not  stifle  production  of  the 
total  product. 

It  is  a  certainty  we  are  confronted 
with  a  population  in  such  numbers  as 
can  only  exist  by  production  attuned 
to  a  pitch  in  which  the  slightest  reduc- 
tion of  the  impulse  to  produce  will  at 
once  create  misery  and  want.  If  we 
throttle  the  fundamental  impulses  of 
man  our  production  will  decay.     The 


36  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

world  in  this  hour  is  witnessing  the 
most  overshadowing  tragedy  of  ten 
centuries  in  the  heart-breaking  hf  e-and- 
death  struggle  with  starvation  by  a 
nation  with  a  hundred  and  fifty  millions 
of  people.  In  Russia  under  the  new 
tyranny  a  group,  in  pursuit  of  social 
theories,  have  destroyed  the  primary 
self-interest  impulse  of  the  individual 
to  production. 

Although  socialism  in  a  nation-wide 
application  has  now  proved  itself  with 
rivers  of  blood  and  inconceivable  misery 
to  be  an  economic  and  spiritual  fallacy 
and  has  wrecked  itself  finally  upon  the 
rocks  of  destroyed  production  and 
moral  degeneracy,  I  believe  it  to  have 
been  necessary  for  the  world  to  have 
had  this  demonstration.  Great  theo- 
retic and  emotional  ideas  have  arisen 
before  in  the  world's  history  and  have 
in  more  than  mere  material  bankruptcy 


ECONOMIC  PHASES  37 

deluged  the  world  with  fearful  losses  of 
life.  A  purely  philosophical  view  might 
be  that  in  the  long  run  humanity  has  to 
try  every  way,  even  precipices,  in  find- 
ing the  road  to  betterment. 

But  those  are  utterly  wrong  who  say 
that  individualism  has  as  its  only  end 
the  acquisition  and  preservation  of 
private  property — the  selfish  snatching 
and  hoarding  of  the  common  product. 
Our  American  individualism,  indeed, 
is  only  in  part  an  economic  creed.  It 
aims  to  provide  opportunity  for  self- 
expression,  not  merely  economically, 
but  spiritually  as  well.  Private  prop- 
erty is  not  a  fetich  in  America.  The 
crushing  of  the  liquor  trade  without  a 
cent  of  compensation,  with  scarcely 
even  a  discussion  of  it,  does  not  bear 
out  the  notion  that  we  give  property 
rights  any  headway  over  human  rights. 
Our  development  of  individualism  shows 


38  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

an  increasing  tendency  to  regard  right 
of  property  not  as  an  object  in  itself, 
but  in  the  Hght  of  a  useful  and  neces- 
sary instrument  in  stimulation  of  in- 
itiative to  the  individual;  not  only 
stimulation  to  him  that  he  may  gain 
personal  comfort,  security  in  life,  pro- 
tection to  his  family,  but  also  because 
individual  accumulation  and  owner- 
ship is  a  basis  of  selection  to  leadership 
in  administration  of  the  tools  of  in- 
dustry and  commerce.  It  is  where 
dominant  private  property  is  assembled 
in  the  hands  of  the  groups  who  control 
the  state  that  the  individual  begins 
to  feel  capital  as  an  oppressor.  Our 
American  demand  for  equality  of  op- 
portunity is  a  constant  militant  check 
upon  capital  becoming  a  thing  to  be 
feared.  Out  of  fear  we  sometimes  even 
go  too  far  and  stifle  the  reproductive 
use  of  capital  by  crushing  the  initiative 
that  makes  for  its  creation. 


ECONOMIC  PHASES  39 

Some  discussion  of  the  legal  limita- 
tions we  have  placed  upon  economic 
domination  is  given  later  on,  but  it  is 
desirable  to  mention  here  certain  potent 
forces  in  our  economic  life  that  are 
themselves  providing  their  own  cor- 
rection to  domination. 

The  domination  by  arbitrary  in- 
dividual ownership  is  disappearing  be- 
cause the  works  of  today  are  steadily 
growing  more  and  more  beyond  the 
resources  of  any  one  individual,  and 
steadily  taxation  will  reduce  relatively 
excessive  individual  accumulations. 
The  number  of  persons  in  partnership 
through  division  of  ownership  among 
many  stockholders  is  steadily  increas- 
ing—thus 100,000  to  200,000  partners 
in  a  single  concern  are  not  uncommon. 
The  overwhelmingly  largest  portion 
of  our  mobile  capital  is  that  of  our 
banks,  insurance  companies,  building 
and   loan   associations,   and   the   vast 


40  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

majority  of  all  this  is  the  aggregated 
small  savings  of  our  people.  Thus 
large  capital  is  steadily  becoming  more 
and  more  a  mobilization  of  the  savings 
of  the  small  holder — the  actual  people 
themselves — and  its  administration  be- 
comes at  once  more  sensitive  to  the 
moral  opinions  of  the  people  in  order 
to  attract  their  support.  The  directors 
and  managers  of  large  concerns,  them- 
selves employees  of  these  great  groups 
of  individual  stockholders,  or  policy 
holders,  reflect  a  spirit  of  community 
responsibility. 

Large  masses  of  capital  can  only 
find  their  market  for  service  or  produc- 
tion to  great  numbers  of  the  same 
kind  of  people  that  they  employ  and 
they  must  therefore  maintain  confi- 
dence in  their  public  responsibilities  in 
order  to  retain  their  customers.  In 
times  when  the  products  of  manufac- 
ture were  mostly  luxuries  to  the  aver- 


ECONOMIC  PHASES  41 

age  of  the  people,  the  condition  of  their 
employees  was  of  no  such  interest  to 
their  customers  as  when  they  cater  to 
employees  in  general.  Of  this  latter, 
no  greater  proofs  need  exist  than  the 
efforts  of  many  large  concerns  directly 
dependent  upon  public  good  will  to 
restrain  prices  in  scarcity — and  the 
very  general  desire  to  yield  a  measure 
of  service  with  the  goods  sold.  Another 
phase  of  this  same  development  in 
administration  of  capital  is  the  growth 
of  a  sort  of  institutional  sense  in  many 
large  business  enterprises.  The  en- 
couragement of  solidarity  in  all  grades 
of  their  employees  in  the  common 
service  and  common  success,  the  sense 
of  mutuality  with  the  prosperity  of  the 
community  are  both  vital  develop- 
ments in  individualism. 

There  has  been  in  the  last  thirty 
years  an  extraordinary  growth  of  organ- 


42  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

izations  for  advancement  of  ideas  in  the 
community  for  mutual  cooperation  and 
economic  objectives — the  chambers  of 
commerce,  trade  associations,  labor 
unions,  bankers,  farmers,  propaganda 
associations,  and  what  not.  These  are 
indeed  variable  mixtures  of  altruism 
and  self-interest.  Nevertheless,  in  these 
groups  the  individual  finds  an  op- 
portunity for  self-expression  and  parti- 
cipation in  the  moulding  of  ideas,  a 
field  for  training  and  the  stepping 
stones  for  leadership. 

The  number  of  leaders  in  local  and 
national  life  whose  opportunity  to 
service  and  leadership  came  through 
these  associations  has  become  now  of 
more  importance  than  those  through 
the  direct  lines  of  political  and  religious 
organization. 

At  times  these  groups  come  into 
sharp  conflict  and  often  enough  charge 
each  other  with  crimes  against  public 


ECONOMIC  PHASES  43 

interest.  They  do  contain  faults;  if 
they  develop  into  warring  interests,  if 
they  dominate  legislators  and  intimi- 
date public  officials,  if  they  are  to  be  a 
new  setting  of  tyranny,  then  they  will 
destroy  the  foundation  of  individual- 
ism. Our  Government  will  then  drift 
into  the  hands  of  timorous  medioc- 
rities dominated  by  groups  until  we 
shall  become  a  syndicalist  nation  on 
a  gigantic  scale.  On  the  other  hand, 
each  group  is  a  realization  of  greater 
mutuality  of  interest,  each  contains 
some  element  of  public  service  and 
each  is  a  school  of  public  responsibility. 
In  the  main,  the  same  forces  that  per- 
meate the  nation  at  large  eventually 
permeate  these  groups.  The  sense 
of  service,  a  growing  sense  of  respon- 
sibility, and  the  sense  of  constructive 
opposition  to  domination,  constantly 
recall  in  them  their  responsibilities  as 
well  as  their  privileges.     In  the  end,  no 


44   AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

group  can  dominate  the  nation  and  a 
few  successes  in  imposing  the  will  of  any 
group  is  its  sure  death  warrant. 

Today  business  organization  is  mov- 
ing strongly  toward  cooperation.  There 
are  in  the  cooperative  great  hopes  that 
we  can  even  gain  in  individuality, 
equality  of  opportunity,  and  an  enlarged 
field  for  initiative,  and  at  the  same  time 
reduce  many  of  the  great  wastes  of  over- 
reckless  competition  in  production  and 
distribution.  Those  who  either  con- 
gratulate themselves  or  those  who 
fear  that  cooperation  is  an  advance 
toward  socialism  need  neither  rejoice 
or  worry.  Cooperation  in  its  current 
economic  sense  represents  the  initiative 
of  self-interest  blended  with  a  sense  of 
service,  for  nobody  belongs  to  a  co- 
operative who  is  not  striving  to  sell  his 
products  or  services  for  more  or  striving 
to  buy  from  others  for  less  or  striving 


ECONOMIC  PHASES  45 

to  make  his  income  more  secure.  Their 
members  are  furnishing  the  capital  for 
extension  of  their  activities  just  as  ef- 
fectively as  if  they  did  it  in  corporate 
form  and  they  are  simply  transferring 
the  profit  principle  from  joint  return 
to  individual  return.  Their  only  suc- 
cess lies  where  they  eliminate  waste 
either  in  production  or  distribution — 
and  they  can  do  neither  if  they  destroy 
individual  initiative.  Indeed  this  phase 
of  development  of  our  individualism 
promises  to  become  the  dominant  note 
of  its  20th  Century  expansion.  But 
it  will  thrive  only  in  so  far  as  it  can 
construct  leadership  and  a  sense  of 
service,  and  so  long  as  it  preserves  the 
initiative  and  safeguards  the  individu- 
ality of  its  members. 

The  economic  system  which  is  the 
result  of  our  individualism  is  not  a 
frozen    organism.      It    moves   rapidly 


46  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

in  its  form  of  organization  under  the 
impulse  of  initiative  of  our  citizens, 
of  growing  science,  of  larger  production, 
and  of  constantly  cheapening  distri- 
bution. 

A  great  test  of  the  soundness  of  a 
social  system  must  be  its  ability  to 
evolve  within  itself  those  orderly  shifts 
in  its  administration  that  enable  it  to 
apply  the  new  tools  of  social,  economic, 
and  intellectual  progress,  and  to  elimi- 
nate the  malign  forces  that  may  grow 
in  the  application  of  these  tools.  When 
we  were  almost  wholly  an  agricultural 
people  our  form  of  organization  and 
administration,  both  in  the  govern- 
mental and  economic  fields,  could  be 
simple.  With  the  enormous  shift  in 
growth  to  industry  and  commerce  we 
have  erected  organisms  that  each  gene- 
ration has  denounced  as  Franken- 
steins,  yet  the  succeeding  generation 
proves   them   to   be   controllable   and 


ECONOMIC  PHASES  47 

useful.  The  growth  of  corporate  organ- 
izations, of  our  banking  systems,  of  our 
railways,  of  our  electrical  power,  of  our 
farm  cooperatives,  of  our  trade  unions, 
of  our  trade  associations,  and  of  a 
hundred  others  indeed  develops  both 
beneficent  and  malign  forces.  The 
timid  become  frightened.  But  our 
basic  social  ideas  march  through  the 
new  things  in  the  end.  Our  dema- 
gogues, of  both  radical  and  standpat 
breed,  thrive  on  demands  for  the  de- 
struction of  one  or  another  of  these 
organizations  as  the  only  solution  for 
their  defects,  yet  progress  requires  only 
a  guardianship  of  the  vital  principles 
of  our  individualism  with  its  safeguard 
of  true  equality  of  opportunity  in  them. 


POLITICAL  PHASES. 

IT  IS  not  the  primary  purpose  of  this 
essay  to  discuss  our  poKtical  organ- 
ization. Democracy  is  merely  the 
mechanism  which  individuaHsm  in- 
vented as  a  device  that  would  carry  on 
the  necessary  political  work  of  its  social 
organization.  Democracy  arises  out  of 
individualism  and  prospers  through  it 
alone. 

Without  question,  there  exists,  al- 
most all  over  the  world,  unprecedented 
disquietude  at  the  functioning  of 
government  itself.  It  is  in  part  the 
dreamy  social  ferment  of  war  emotion. 
It  is  in  part  the  aftermath  of  a  period 
when  the  Government  was  everything 
and  the  individual  nothing,  from  which 
there  is  much  stimulation  to  two  schools 

48 


POLITICAL  PHASES  49 

of  thought:  one  that  all  human  ills  can 
be  cured  by  governmental  regulation, 
and  the  other  that  all  regulation  is  a 
sin. 

During  the  war,  the  mobilization  of 
every  effort,  the  destruction  of  the 
normal  demand  and  the  normal  ave- 
nues of  distribution,  required  a  vast 
excursion  over  the  deadline  of  individ- 
ualism in  order  that  we  might  secure 
immediate  results.  Its  continuation 
would  have  destroyed  the  initiative 
of  our  people  and  undermined  all  real 
progress.  We  are  slowly  getting  back, 
but  many  still  aspire  to  these  supposed 
short  cuts  to  the  millennium. 

Much  of  our  discontent  takes  the 
form  of  resentment  against  the  in- 
equalities in  the  distribution  of  the 
sacrifices  of  war.  Both  silently  and 
vocally  there  is  complaint  that  while 
some  died,  others  ran  no  risk,  and  yet 
others  profited.     For  these  complaints 


50  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

there  is  adequate  justification.  The 
facts  are  patent.  However,  no  conceiv- 
able human  inteUigence  would  be  able 
to  manage  the  conduct  of  war  so  as  to 
see  that  all  sacrifices  and  burdens  should 
be  distributed  equitably.  War  is  de- 
struction, and  we  should  blame  war 
for  its  injustices;  not  a  social  system 
whose  object  is  construction.  The 
submergence  of  the  individual,  how- 
ever, in  the  struggle  of  the  race  could 
be  but  temporary — its  continuance 
through  the  crushing  of  individual 
action  and  its  inequities  would,  if  for 
no  other  reason,  destroy  the  founda- 
tions of  our  civilization. 

Looked  at  as  the  umpire  in  our  social 
system,  our  Government  has  maintained 
an  equality  before  the  law  and  a  devel- 
opment of  legal  justice  and  an  authority 
in  restraint  of  evil  instincts  that  sup- 
port this  social  system  and  its  ideals  so 


POLITICAL  PHASES  51 

far  as  the  imperfections  of  developing 
human  institutions  permit.  It  has  gone 
the  greatest  distance  of  any  government 
toward  maintaining  an  equaUty  of  fran- 
chise; an  equaUty  of  entrance  to  pubHc 
office,  and  government  by  the  majority. 
It  has  succeeded  far  beyond  all  others 
in  those  safeguards  of  equality  of  op- 
portunity through  education,  public 
information,  and  the  open  channels  of 
free  speech  and  free  press.  It  is,  how- 
ever, much  easier  to  chart  the  course 
of  progress  to  government  in  dealing 
with  the  abstract  problems  of  order, 
political  liberty,  and  stimulation  to 
intellectual  and  moral  advancement 
than  it  is  to  chart  its  relations  to  the 
economic  seas.  These  seas  are  new 
and  only  partly  discovered  or  explored. 
Our  Government's  greatest  troubles 
and  failures  are  in  the  economic  field. 
Forty  years  ago  the  contact  of  the  in- 
dividual with  the  Government  had  its 


52  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

largest  expression  in  the  sheriff  or 
poHceman,  and  in  debates  over  poHtical 
equaUty.  In  those  happy  days  the 
Government  offered  but  small  inter- 
ference with  the  economic  life  of  the 
citizen.  But  with  the  vast  develop- 
ment of  industry  and  the  train  of 
regulating  functions  of  the  national  and 
municipal  government  that  followed 
from  it;  with  the  recent  vast  increase 
in  taxation  due  to  the  war; — the  Govern- 
ment has  become  through  its  relations 
to  economic  life  the  most  potent  force 
for  maintenance  or  destruction  of  our 
American  individualism. 

The  entrance  of  the  Government  be- 
gan strongly  three  decades  ago,  when 
our  industrial  organization  began  to 
move  powerfully  in  the  direction  of  con- 
solidation of  enterprise.  We  found  in 
the  course  of  this  development  that 
equality  of  opportunity  and  its  corol- 


POLITICAL  PHASES  53 

lary,  individual  initiative,  was  being 
throttled  by  the  concentration  of  con- 
trol of  industry  and  service,  and  thus 
an  economic  domination  of  groups 
builded  over  the  nation.  At  this  time, 
particularly,  we  were  threatened  with 
a  form  of  autocracy  of  economic  power. 
Our  mass  of  regulation  of  public  utili- 
ties and  our  legislation  against  restraint 
of  trade  is  the  monument  to  our  intent 
to  preserve  an  equality  of  opportunity. 
This  regulation  is  itself  proof  that  we 
have  gone  a  long  way  toward  the 
abandonment  of  the  "capitalism''  of 
Adam  Smith. 

Day  by  day  we  learn  more  as  to  the 
practical  application  of  restrictions 
against  economic  and  political  domina- 
tion. We  sometimes  lag  behind  in  the 
correction  of  those  forces  that  would 
override  liberty,  justice,  and  equality 
of  opportunity,  but  the  principle  is  so 
strong  within  us  that  domination  of  the 


54  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

few  will  not  be  tolerated.  These  re- 
straints must  keep  pace  with  the  grow- 
ing complexity  of  our  economic 
organization,  but  they  need  tuning  to 
our  social  system  if  they  would  not  take 
us  into  great  dangers.  As  we  build  up 
our  powers  of  production  through  the  ad- 
vancing application  of  science  we  create 
new  forces  with  which  men  may  domi- 
nate— ^railway,  power,  oil,  and  what  not. 
They  may  produce  temporary  block- 
ades upon  equality  of  opportunity. 

To  curb  the  forces  in  business  which 
would  destroy  equality  of  opportunity 
and  yet  to  maintain  the  initiative  and 
creative  faculties  of  our  people  are  the 
twin  objects  we  must  attain.  To  pre- 
serve the  former  we  must  regulate  that 
type  of  activity  that  would  dominate. 
To  preserve  the  latter,  the  Government 
must  keep  out  of  production  and  distri- 
bution of  commodities  and  services. 
This  is  the  deadline  between  our  sys- 


POLITICAL  PHASES  55 

tern  and  socialism.  Regulation  to  pre- 
vent domination  and  unfair  practices, 
yet  preserving  rightful  initiative,  are  in 
keeping  with  our  social  foundations. 
Nationalization  of  industry  or  business 
is  their  negation. 

When  we  come  to  the  practical  prob- 
lems of  government  in  relation  to  these 
economic  questions  the  test  lies  in  two 
directions:  Does  this  act  safeguard  an 
equality  of  opportunity  ?  Does  it  main- 
tain the  initiative  of  our  people.^  For 
in  the  first  must  lie  the  deadline  against 
domination,  and  in  the  second  the  dead- 
line in  preservation  of  individualism 
against  socialism.  Excluding  the  tem- 
porary measures  of  the  war,  the  period 
of  regulation  has  now  been  long  enough 
with  us  to  begin  to  take  stock  of  its 
effect  upon  our  social  system.  It  has 
been  highly  beneficial,  but  it  has  also 
developed  weaknesses  in  the  throttling 
of  proper  initiative  that  require  some 


56  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

revision.  We  have  already  granted 
relief  to  labor  organizations  and  to 
agriculture  from  some  forms  of  regula- 
tion. There  is,  however,  a  large  field 
of  cooperative  possibilities  far  outside 
agriculture  that  are  needlessly  ham- 
pered. 

The  most  important  of  considerations 
in  any  attempt  to  pass  judgment  upon 
social  systems  is  whether  we  maintain 
within  them  permanent  and  continuous 
motivation  toward  progress.  These 
forces  must  be  of  two  orders,  one  spirit- 
ual and  the  other  economic. 

We  may  discover  the  situation  in  our 
own  social  system  either  by  an  analysis 
of  the  forces  that  are  today  in  motion 
or  by  noting  the  strides  of  progress 
over  the  century  or  over  the  last  ten 
years.  By  a  consideration  of  the  forces 
that  move  us  we  can  see  whether  our 
system  shows  signs  of  decay,  whether 


POLITICAL  PHASES  57 

its  virility  is  maintained;  and  by  the 
touchstone  of  time  we  can  find  out 
whether  these  forces  have  been  power- 
ful enough  to  overcome  the  malign 
influences  that  would  lessen  the  well- 
being  of  our  system. 

If  we  should  survey  the  fundamentals 
of  our  civilization  from  the  point  of 
view  of  its  progress  by  the  test  of  time, 
we  can  find  much  for  satisfaction  and 
assurance.  It  is  unnecessary  to  re- 
count the  values  of  economic  individual- 
ism in  stimulation  to  invention;  large 
constructive  vision;  intensity  in  produc- 
tion with  decreased  physical  effort; 
our  increased  standards  of  living 
and  comfort.  It  is  of  course  easy  to 
enumerate  our  great  economic  progress, 
but  the  progress  of  the  social  forces  that 
will  sustain  economic  progress  is  in- 
finitely more  important — for  upon  them 
depends  the  real  future  of  our  people. 
Education  in  its  many  phases  has  made 


58  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

much  advance.  The  actual  equipment, 
the  character  of  instruction,  the  num- 
bers reached,  period  of  instruction — 
show  improvement  with  every  decade. 
PubKc  opinion  has  become  of  steadily 
increasing  potency  and  reliability  in  its 
reaction.  The  great  strides  in  develop- 
ment of  processes  and  equipment  for 
production  and  distribution  are  being 
followed  by  increasing  devotion  to  the 
human  factors  in  their  execution. 
Moral  standards  of  business  and  com- 
merce are  improving;  vicious  city  gov- 
ernments are  less  in  number;  invisible 
government  has  greatly  diminished; 
public  conscience  is  penetrating  deeper 
and  deeper;  the  rooting  up  of  wrong 
grows  more  vigorous;  the  agencies  for 
their  exposure  and  remedy  grow  more 
numerous,  and  above  all  is  the  growing 
sense  of  service.  Many  people  confuse 
the  exposure  of  wrongs  which  were  below 
the   surface   with   degeneration;   their 


POLITICAL  PHASES  59 

very  exposure  is  progress.  Some  ac- 
credit the  exposures  of  failure  in  our 
government  and  business  as  evidence  of 
standards  of  a  lower  order  than  in 
some  other  nations.  A  considerable 
experience  leads  me  to  the  conviction 
that  while  we  do  wash  our  dirty  linen 
in  public  most  others  never  wash  it. 

It  is  easy  to  arraign  any  existing  in- 
stitution. Men  can  rightly  be  critical 
because  things  have  happened  that  never 
ought  to  happen.  That  our  social 
system  contains  faults  no  one  disputes. 
One  can  recite  the  faulty  results  of  our 
system  at  great  length;  the  spirit  of 
lawlessness;  the  uncertainty  of  employ- 
ment in  some  callings;  the  deadening 
effect  of  certain  repetitive  processes  of 
manufacture;  the  12-hour  day  in  a  few 
industries;  unequal  voice  in  bargaining 
for  wage  in  some  employment;  arrogant 
domination   by   some   employers   and 


60  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

some  labor  leaders;  child  labor  in  some 
states;  inadequate  instruction  in  some 
areas;  unfair  competition  in  some  in- 
dustries; some  fortunes  excessive  far 
beyond  the  needs  of  stimulation  to  ini- 
tiative; survivals  of  religious  intoler- 
ance; political  debauchery  of  some 
cities;  weaknesses  in  our  governmental 
structure.  Most  of  these  occur  locally 
in  certain  regions  and  certain  industries 
and  must  cause  every  thinking  person 
to  regret  and  to  endeavor.  But  they 
are  becoming  steadily  more  local.  That 
they  are  recognized  and  condemned  is  a 
long  way  on  the  road  to  progress. 

One  of  the  difficulties  in  social 
thought  is  to  find  the  balance  of  per- 
spective. A  single  crime  does  not  mean 
a  criminal  community.  It  is  easy  to 
point  out  undernourished,  overworked, 
uneducated  children,  children  barred 
from  the  equality  of  opportunity  that 


POLITICAL  PHASES  61 

our  ideals  stand  for.  It  is  easy  to 
point  out  the  luxurious  petted  and 
spoiled  children  with  favored  opportun- 
ity in  every  community.  But  if  we 
take  the  whole  thirty-five  millions  of 
children  of  the  United  States,  it  would 
be  a  gross  exaggeration  to  say  that  a 
million  of  them  suffer  from  any  of  these 
injustices.  This  is  indeed  a  million 
too  many,  but  it  is  the  thirty-four 
million  that  tests  the  system  with  the 
additional  touchstone  of  whether  there 
are  forces  in  motivation  which  are 
insistently  and  carefully  working  for 
the  amelioration  of  the  one  million. 
Its  by-products  of  endowed  loafers,  or 
hoodlums,  at  respective  ends  of  the 
economic  scale,  are  indeed  spectac- 
ular faults.  Yet  any  analysis  of  the 
105,000,000  of  us  would  show  that  we 
harbor  less  than  a  million  of  either  rich 
or  impecunious  loafers.  If  we  measure 
our  people  by  scales  of  other  civilized 


62  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

peoples,  we  also  find  consolation.  We 
have  a  distaste  for  the  very  expression  of 
"class,"  but  if  we  would  use  European 
scales  of  "classes"  we  would  find  that 
above  their  scale  of  "lower  classes"  we 
have  in  equivalent  comfort,  morality, 
understanding,  and  intelligence  fully 
eighty  per  cent,  of  our  native-born 
whites.  No  European  state  will  lay 
claim  to  thirty  per  cent,  of  this  order. 
Does  this  not  mean  that  we  have  been 
gaining  something.^ 

I  do  not  conceive  that  any  man,  or 
body  of  men,  could  ever  be  capable  of 
drafting  a  plan  that  would  solve  these 
multiple  difficulties  in  advance.  More- 
over, if  we  continue  to  advance  we  will 
find  new  difficulties  and  weaknesses  as 
the  by-product  of  progress — but  to  be 
overcome. 


THE   FUTURE. 

INDIVIDUALISM  has  been  the  pri- 
mary force  of  American  civihzation 
for  three  centuries.  It  is  our  sort  of 
individuaKsm  that  has  supplied  the 
motivation  of  America's  political,  eco- 
nomic, and  spiritual  institutions  in  all 
these  years.  It  has  proved  its  ability 
to  develop  its  institutions  with  the 
changing  scene.  Our  very  form  of 
government  is  the  product  of  the  in- 
dividualism of  our  people,  the  demand 
for  an  equal  opportunity,  for  a  fair 
chance. 

The  American  pioneer  is  the  epic  ex- 
pression of  that  individualism,  and  the 
pioneer  spirit  is  the  response  to  the 
challenge  of  opportunity,  to  the  chal- 
lenge of  nature,  to  the  challenge  of  life, 

63 


64  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

to  the  call  of  the  frontier.  That  spirit 
need  never  die  for  lack  of  something  for 
it  to  achieve.  There  will  always  be  a 
frontier  to  conquer  or  to  hold  as  long  as 
men  think,  plan,  and  dare.  Our  Amer- 
ican individualism  has  received  much 
of  its  character  from  our  contacts  with 
the  forces  of  nature  on  a  new  continent. 
It  evolved  government  without  official 
emissaries  to  show  the  way;  it  plowed 
and  sowed  two  score  of  great  states; 
it  built  roads,  bridges,  railways,  cities; 
it  carried  forward  every  attribute  of 
high  civilization  over  a  continent.  The 
days  of  the  pioneer  are  not  over.  There 
are  continents  of  human  welfare  of 
which  we  have  penetrated  only  the 
coastal  plain.  The  great  continent  of 
science  is  as  yet  explored  only  on  its 
borders,  and  it  is  only  the  pioneer 
who  will  penetrate  the  frontier  in 
the  quest  for  new  worlds  to  con- 
quer.    The  very  genius  of  our  insti- 


THE  FUTURE  65 

tutlons  has  been  given  to  them  by 
the  pioneer  spirit.  Our  individualism 
is  rooted  in  our  very  nature.  It  is 
based  on  conviction  born  of  experience. 
Equal  opportunity,  the  demand  for  a 
fair  chance,  became  the  formula  of 
American  individualism  because  it  is 
the  method  of  American  achievement. 
After  the  absorption  of  the  great 
plains  of  the  West  came  the  era  of 
industrial  development  with  the  new 
complex  of  forces  that  it  has  brought 
us.  Now  haltingly,  but  with  more 
surety  and  precision  than  ever  before 
and  with  a  more  conscious  understand- 
ing of  our  mission,  we  are  finding  solu- 
tion of  these  problems  arising  from  new 
conditions,  for  the  forces  of  our  social 
system  can  compass  and  comprise  these. 

Our  individualism  is  no  middle 
ground  between  autocracy — ^whether 
of  birth,  economic  or  class  origin— and 


66  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

socialism.  Socialism  of  different  varie- 
ties may  have  something  to  recommend 
it  as  an  intellectual  stop-look-and-listen 
sign,  more  especially  for  Old  World 
societies.  But  it  contains  only  destruc- 
tion to  the  forces  that  make  progress  in 
our  social  system.  Nor  does  salvation 
come  by  any  device  for  concentration 
of  power,  whether  political  or  economic, 
for  both  are  equally  reversions  to  Old 
World  autocracy  in  new  garments. 

Salvation  will  not  come  to  us  out 
of  the  wreckage  of  individualism. 
What  we  need  today  is  steady  devo- 
tion to  a  better,  brighter,  broader  in- 
dividualism— an  individualism  that  car- 
ries increasing  responsibility  and  service 
to  our  fellows.  Our  need  is  not  for  a 
way  out  but  for  a  way  forward.  We 
found  our  way  out  three  centuries  ago 
when  our  forefathers  left  Europe  for 
these  shores,  to  set  up  here  a  common- 
wealth conceived  in  liberty  and  dedi- 


THE  FUTURE  67 

cated  to  the  development  of  individ- 
uality. 

There  are  malign  social  forces  other 
than  our  failures  that  would  destroy 
our  progress.  There  are  the  equal 
dangers  both  of  reaction  and  radicalism. 
The  perpetual  howl  of  radicalism  is  that 
it  is  the  sole  voice  of  liberalism — that 
devotion  to  social  progress  is  its  field 
alone.  These  men  would  assume  that 
all  reform  and  human  advance  must 
come  through  government.  They  have 
forgotten  that  progress  must  come  from 
the  steady  lift  of  the  individual  and 
that  the  measure  of  national  idealism 
and  progress  is  the  quality  of  idealism 
in  the  individual.  The  most  trying 
support  of  radicalism  comes  from  the 
timid  or  dishonest  minds  that  shrink 
from  facing  the  result  of  radicalism 
itself  but  are  devoted  to  defense  ,of 
radicalism  as  proof  of  a  liberal  mind. 


68  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

Most  theorists  who  denounce  our  in- 
dividuaKsm  as  a  social  basis  seem  to 
have  a  passion  for  ignorance  of  its  con- 
structive ideals. 

An  even  greater  danger  is  the  destruc- 
tive criticism  of  minds  too  weak  or  too 
partisan  to  harbor  constructive  ideas. 
For  such,  criticism  is  based  upon  the 
distortion  of  perspective  or  cunning 
misrepresentation.  There  is  never  dan- 
ger from  the  radical  himself  until  the 
structure  and  confidence  of  society  has 
been  undermined  by  the  enthronement 
of  destructive  criticism.  Destructive 
criticism  can  certainly  lead  to  revolution 
unless  there  are  those  willing  to  with- 
stand the  malice  that  flows  in  return 
from  refutation.  It  has  been  well  said 
that  revolution  is  no  summer  thunder- 
storm clearing  the  atmosphere.  In 
modern  society  it  is  a  tornado  leaving 
in   its   path   the   destroyed   homes   of 


THE  FUTURE  69 

millions  with  their  dead  women  and 
children. 

There  are  also  those  who  insist  that 
the  future  must  be  a  repetition  of  the 
past;  that  ideas  are  dangerous,  that 
ideals  are  freaks. 

To  find  that  fine  balance  which  links 
the  future  with  the  past,  whose  vision 
is  of  men  and  not  of  tools,  that  possesses 
the  courage  to  construct  rather  than  to 
criticize — this  is  our  need.  There  is  no 
oratory  so  easy,  no  writing  so  trenchant 
and  vivid  as  the  phrase-making  of  criti- 
cism and  malice — there  is  none  so  diflS- 
cult  as  inspiration  to  construction. 

We  cannot  ever  afford  to  rest  at  ease 
in  the  comfortable  assumption  that 
right  ideas  always  prevail  by  some  vir- 
tue of  their  own.  In  the  long  run  they 
do.  But  there  can  be  and  there  have 
been  periods  of  centuries  when  the 
world  slumped  back  toward  darkness 


70  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

merely  because  great  masses  of  men 
became  impregnated  with  wrong  ideas 
and  wrong  social  philosophies.  The 
declines  of  civilization  have  been  born 
of  wrong  ideas.  Most  of  the  wars  of 
the  world,  including  the  recent  one, 
have  been  fought  by  the  advocates  of 
contrasting  ideas  of  social  philosophy. 
The  primary  safeguard  of  American 
individualism  is  an  understanding  of  it; 
of  faith  that  it  is  the  most  precious  pos- 
session of  American  civilization,  and 
a  willingness  courageously  to  test  every 
process  of  national  life  upon  the  touch- 
stone of  this  basic  social  premise.  De- 
velopment of  the  human  institutions 
and  of  science  and  of  industry  have 
been  long  chains  of  trial  and  error. 
Our  pubhc  relations  to  them  and  to 
other  phases  of  our  national  life  can  be 
advanced  in  no  other  way  than  by  a 
willingness  to  experiment  in  the  rem- 
edy of  our  social  faults.     The  failures 


THE  FUTURE  71 

and  unsolved  problems  of  economic 
and  social  life  can  be  corrected; 
they  can  be  solved  within  our  social 
theme  and  under  no  other  system. 
The  solution  is  a  matter  of  will  to  find 
solution;  of  a  sense  of  duty  as  well  as  of 
a  sense  of  right  and  citizenship.  No 
one  who  buys  "bootleg"  whiskey  can 
complain  of  gunmen  and  hoodlumism. 
Humanity  has  a  long  road  to  perfec- 
tion, but  we  of  America  can  make  sure 
progress  if  we  will  preserve  our  in- 
dividualism, if  we  will  preserve  and 
stimulate  the  initiative  of  our  people, 
if  we  will  build  up  our  insistence  and 
safeguards  to  equality  of  opportunity, 
if  we  will  glorify  service  as  a  part  of 
our  national  character.  Progress  will 
march  if  we  hold  an  abiding  faith  in  the 
intelligence,  the  initiative,  the  charac- 
ter, the  courage,  and  the  divine  touch 
in  the  individual.  We  can  safeguard 
these  ends  if  we  give  to  each  individual 


72  AMERICAN  INDIVIDUALISM 

that  opportunity  for  which  the  spirit 
of  America  stands.  We  can  make  a 
social  system  as  perfect  as  our  genera- 
tion merits  and  one  that  will  be  re- 
ceived in  gratitude  by  our  children. 


THE  END 


Of  International  Importance 

The  Life  and  Letters  of  Walter  H.  Page 

By  Burton  J.  Hendrick 

^T  '' '  Here/  I  have  said  to  myself  again  and 
^^  again,  *  here  is  the  voice  of  America's  higher 
self.  Here  is  a  man  who  has  unmistakably  ar- 
rived at  that  point  of  view  regarding  our  social 
and  national  destinies  which  all  intelligent  men 
will  reach  by  and  by/" — Stuart  P.  Sherman. 
In  Two  Volumes 

Woodrow  Wilson  and  World  Settlement 

Written  from  his  personal  and  unpublished  material  by 
Ray  Stannard  Baker 

Here  is  history.  It  is  now  your  privilege 
to  read  for  the  first  time,  the  authentic 
account  of  what  Wilson  wanted  to  do,  did,  and 
failed  to  do.  Here  is  Lloyd  George,  Clemenceau, 
Orlando,  the  secret  minutes  of  the  Councils  of 
Four  and  Ten,  the  making  of  Peace  at  Paris. 
In  Three  Volumes 


c 


